Showstoppers

Top designers, industry experts and new products - they'll all be under one roof at next week's Vancouver Home + Design Show

Transformer’ furniture is designed for micro-condos. These pieces can take many shapes, beginning as desks and morphing into beds with a few quick adjustments.

At this year’s Vancouver Home + Design Show, small is the new big.

“One of the top things is the 300-square-foot micro-condo,” show manager Jill Kivett said. She and her team were inspired by newspaper stories last year about some Gastown condos that are 300 square feet. “We wondered, what would that be like?”

At the Home show, which runs from Oct. 11 to 14 at BC Place, you’ll have a chance to at least walk through a tiny apartment. Size might not matter, however, since Resource Furniture is outfitting the space to take advantage of every inch.

“They’re just amazing safe-spacing pieces that are really, really different,” Kivett said. On a video posted on YouTube, Resource Furniture demonstrates what it calls its “Transformer furniture.” One piece starts as a desk – until the wall it’s mounted on is lowered to become a bed. The desk stays parallel to the floor as it is neatly tucked beneath, not a pencil out of place.

Fans of home renovation and style TV shows will have a field day checking out the HGTV main stage, which features decorating and renovating stars like Bryan Baeumler, Jillian Harris, stylist Janette Ewen, interior designer Alykhan Velji and colour expert Maria Killam.

Baeumler, a host of Canada’s Handyman Challenge, is a return guest who “fills all the seats, every time,” Kivett said. “He tells you how to renovate, how to survive the renovations, how to make the right decisions. He just gives you a no-nonsense approach on how to do it right.”

Reality TV viewers will recognize Harris from her turn as the titular single person in the 2009 season of the ABC hit The Bachelorette. These days, however, Harris is better known for her interior design skills and other TV hosting duties.

She designed this year’s PNE prize home and has hosted Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, and will host the forthcoming Vancouver version of the popular show Love It or List It, about people torn between renovating or selling their homes.

Of course, home and design also means kitchens and food. On opening night, Oct. 11, the show features a dessert duel on the Savour Your Life Cooking Stage. In the battle of butter, three top Vancouver pastry chefs compete “for bragging rights and a cute trophy to see whose dessert comes out on top,” Kivett said.

Speaking of chefs, Rob Feenie will be one of a number of kitchen masters demonstrating their skills over the weekend. On Oct. 13 at the Samsung Passion for Fresh Cooking Challenge, chefs from top Vancouver restaurants will mentor local amateur cooks. The prize consists of $7,500 worth of appliances, including a “smart” fridge outfitted with Wi-Fi, which can sync to your smart phone. Kivett said it will also soon have bar-code scanning technology so the fridge can tell you when your milk goes bad. “It’s a design piece on its own,” Kivett said.

For the worry warts among us, exhibitors at The Vancouver Preparedness Show will discuss what measures people can take to prepare themselves for disaster, such as earthquakes, tsunamis or their sentient fridges trying to take over the world. Well, maybe not the latter.

“It’s not a sexy topic,” Kivett admits. “People don’t want to think about what could happen to their house, their family, their pets, in case of a natural disaster. But everyone, whether you live in a big house or a condo, should be prepared.”

Over 300 exhibitors will be at the show, most from B.C. but also Alberta and Washington State. Among the must-sees is Steelwood Design. “She [designer Alexis Dodd] does one-of-a-kind furniture, and they’re all about recycling and repurposing,” Kivett said. One piece is the link perch stool – a stool with a link chain for a base.

“Repurposing” is a buzzword at this year’s show – Oct. 14 includes a repurposing competition presented by Habitat for Humanity. But it’s renovation that is the Home + Design Show’s bread and butter, or bricks and mortar.

“It’s a good time to renovate,” Kivett said. “In Vancouver, people can renovate with confidence. They know that what they do is going to benefit them. We do shows all over the U.S. and Canada, and you can’t really say that about every market.”

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